Extended Self-test stuck

[Swanty]

Hello.
I got report that I have 301 bad sectors and I did the "Short Self-test" and it reported no problems.
I tried the "Extended Self-test", but it also shows no problems during the test, but at the end it's stuck now at "Estimated time remaining" : "1 minutes"
See screenshot: http://puu.sh/6WQjU/a520966d05.png
Is the estimation wrong? Should I be rather looking at the progress bar instead?
The progress bar keeps moving forward from time to time.

The laptop has no battery so could those bad sectors be also from power losses or something like that?
Or should I be worried and backup everything now?

[hdsentinel]

The estimated time for the test is provided by the manufacturer of the hard disk - and it is usually valid if there is no absolutely no other hard disk activity during the test. On a system hard disk, due to the actual operating system and active programs, there are always disk activity - which may all cause that the extended self test runs longer than expected: as all data read/write operations have higher priority than the test itself. So the test is delayed (or even some steps may be repeated) which may cause that the progress bar also jumps back and the estimated time for the test seems stuck at 1 minute.
This is normal.

Generally, power loss / accidental reset usually causes "weak sectors" which can be easily repaired.
It is possible that bad sectors also caused by this - but I do not think so.

However, if the test is still running, it may be a good sign: as usually the hardware short / extended tests fail quickly if the drive status is not perfect and not stable. So if you still see the test running without problems, it may mean that the hard disk status is stable and it can be still used - but because of the relatively high number of problems, I'd recommend to use only with constant monitoring by Hard Disk Sentinel - and perform backup upon any (even minor) new problem.
Also I'd suggest performing the other tests (at least Disk -> Surface test -> Read test), just to confirm the situation.

For more information, please click on the "?" next to the text description and check
http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#health
http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq.php#tests

[Swanty]

Okay extended self-test finished with no errors.
I also ran the surface test - read and it reported 0 damaged and 0 bad sectors.
I really don't know what should I be thinking since it said 301 before i did any tests.

[hdsentinel]

This sounds good, confirming that the current status of the hard disk seems stable.

The "bad sectors" reported in the text description are no longer used by the hard disk: they are already reallocated.
So a special spare area is used for all reads and writes targeting those bad sectors. This means that disk surface tests (even the tests in Hard Disk Sentinel) does not access those sectors, but tests the remaining data area and the spare area.

This is good, as this way you can be sure that the original (bad) area does not contain important data and can't risk data loss as these sectors will be never re-used again by the drive.

This is why the detected and reported bad sectors can NEVER cause problems, regardless of their position because that problematic area is never used any more.

This is why manufacturers (really shame but work this way) "allow" some bad sectors.

The questions are always:
- are there any possible other sectors which need to be examined / re-allocated?
- is it risk that new such bad sectors will appear again?

In this situation, that you confirmed that the hard disk now can be used, you may even clear the error-counters in Hard Disk Sentinel: to acknowledge the problems and restore the health. Then Hard Disk Sentinel will only report any newer problems (if there will be) with the hard disk drive.

This is described exactly at Frequently Asked Questions page, How to repair hard disk drive? How to eliminate displayed hard disk problems?
available directly at http://www.hdsentinel.com/faq_repair_ha ... _drive.php

[Swanty]

I cleared the counter as instructed and set sound and display alert "when new log entry is added".
Thank you so much for your amazing work! =)